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The locals' walk · Queenstown, Otago & Fiordland

The Frankton Track, and the detour nobody mentions

It is the favourite walk of people who live here: flat, along the water, and you can cut it wherever you like because the bus comes back along the shore. But there is a section on detour through all of 2026, and that is worth knowing before you set off.

  1. What it is

    Just over seven kilometres one way around the Frankton Arm, from the town beach to Frankton Beach. Under 50 metres of climb in the whole thing: an hour twenty at a brisk pace, two hours taking it easy. It starts on foot from the centre, no car and no ticket.

  2. The trick: do not walk all of it

    You can stop at any point and come back on the bus along the shore, and that is the way to do it well. The last stretch gets monotonous, so this is a walk to sell in pieces: walk what you feel like, catch the bus, come home. NZ$2.50 with a Bee Card.

  3. The 2026 detour

    Through all of 2026 one section is diverted onto the sealed footpath of Frankton Road for infrastructure works. Anyone expecting a quiet path by the water will spend that part walking beside a main road. It does not ruin the walk, but knowing changes which end you start from.